Paul Dirks writes: If you spend enough time over at Lew Rockwell you eventually get a feel for who is in fact arguing from principle and who is in fact a bigot.

Actually, you won't. Rockwell gives Gary North a platform, which I find repugnant and wholly indefensible. North is a Christian Reconstruction who identifies as a "libertarian" for economic purposes. But he would abolish the Bill of Rights, and stone gay men (not women, because Leviticus doesn't call for it), as well as unruly children and adulterers. Freedom of religion would be extremely curtailed. But Lew doesn't publish THOSE North views.

Libertarians of the Reason and Cato variety have some concern that the Paul surge is identifying the libertarian brand in the public mind, when in fact Paul is a Rothbardian/Rockwellian libertarian, as most of us are not. Most libertarians favor abortion rights and marriage equality for gays. Yet, we tend to be pleased to see Paul making the anti-imperalism and local autonomy sales message. (Hard cases make bad uniform policy; that states' rights was the rallying cry for racists in no way means that centralized, federal control of every contentious issue is healthy for the nation.)

Myself, I was, for a long time, a libertarian pro-lifer. But if pro-life = all abortion is illegal, I stopped being pro-life a bit less than a decade ago and now think it should be legal for the first three months. Nevertheless, many arguments put forth in favor of abortion rights continue to disgust me, and I find the fetish many have made of protecting Roe frustrating beyond description. As South Dakota recently demonstrated, even many red states do not want to criminalize all abortions. As my parents' generation dies off, the overwhelming majority of Americans who believe abortion should be legal in at least the first trimester will only grow. Returning the issue to the states -- in the unlikely event Roe is ever overturned -- will have little impact. States who retain the anti-abortion laws they had on the books when Roe was decided will repeal/modify them, because the public will demand it.

And in those handful of states that would criminalize still, for a decade or two we'd have to have feminist charities and such willing to foot the bill to send women across state boarders for abortions, for those who lacked the means to get there themselves. The only abortion that I know of which has occurred in my immediate family took place across state lines for privacy's sake -- and believe me, the parties were poor.

Roe is not some effing Holy Grail to protected at all costs, and making it so greatly distorts our politics at the federal level. I'm sick of that nonsense, more than I can describe. Foreign policy and a tyrannical Executive are just a mite important, no?

Finally, I am wholly in Glenn's corner on all this, and think Ezra, Shakespeare's Sister and others are in hysterics' mode. They simply cannot deal with abortion reasonably or rationally, and so Glenn's posts about Pail -- in which Glenn does NOT endorse Paul's position on abortion -- are misconstrued by minds in the grip of the Roe fetish.

WT writes: Also, although it may be impolite to say something about Glenn which he hasn't said himself, I think it's pretty clear that he's a libertarian; the internal evidence of his own political reasoning, as well as the external evidence provided by folks like Mona seems conclusive enough to me

I can't argue with what his own reasoning suggests to you, but I can make observations about any assumption derived from what I know of his his-pre-blog relationship with me. Glenn and I do not always agree, and that has ever been so. Do I find him libertarianish? Yup. But my own libertarianism is Hayekian, rather than Rothbardian, which are horses of a very different color. For one thing, Hayek did not oppose every social welfare program, even as he was deeply concerned about the "taking the king's coin and so dancing his jig" issue.

Anyway, you should not attribute my views to Glenn, or vice versa. While there is significant commonality, there is also divergence. Judge Glenn (and me) by what we actually write. We do NOT speak for each other.

I welcome anything that challenges our status quo in the way it needs to be challenged and which begins to uproot the orthodoxies which are fundamentally transforming and degrading our country. Since you (and Tim Russert) think that Ron Paul is far too crazy to do that, let me know who you think is doing it?

You go, Glenn! That comment was simply outstanding and so, so true and insightful.

My only tiny quibble is that Democrat Dennis Kucinich is about as good on the obscenity known as the War on Drugs as Paul is. Of course, as Paul has observed, he and Kucinich are friends.

About that execrable Russert attack/interview with Paul -- he quoted former Paul aide Eric Dondero, who is nothing short of insane. What Dondero believes is truly and utterly deranged. He traverses the libertarian blogs -- including occasionally the one where I write -- and shrieks that we are all failing to grasp the "Islamofascist" peril, and he loves Rudy. Whom Dondero seems to think is a true libertarian, which could not be more preposterous. Hence we treat Dondero as the joke that he is, nothwithstanding that Tim Russert finds him quote-worthy.

Rudy Giuliani, whom former Paul aide Eric Dondero -- lovingly quoted by Tim Russert in his attack on Paul -- thinks is a real libertarian, cuz Rudy wants to wage war on The Islamofascist Global Threat to Civilization.